History of C (Re: Why do you use a devil as a mascot?)

[Chad Perrin]

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 01:00:35AM -0800, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> >
> > ... D is already another programming language ...
> 
> It wasn't back then :)

It is now, though, so it's a little late.  So sorry.


> 
> > I don't know what this P has to do with it.
> 
> You have revealed yourself as a newbie :)

No -- I've revealed myself as someone who doesn't care nearly as much
about C++ as about C.


> 
> In the beginning there was CPL, the "Combined Programming Language."
> It was large enough to be infeasible to implement using then-current
> technologies, so the "Bootstrap Combined Programming Language" (BCPL)
> was invented, with the intent that the first CPL compiler would be
> written in BCPL.
> 
> CPL never amounted to much -- I don't know whether it was ever
> implemented at all -- but BCPL developed a following.  Someone
> (at Bell Labs?) produced a derivative called B, from which a few
> researchers at Murray Hill derived C.  Thus the question:  should
> the next language in the series be named D (next alphabetically)
> or P (next letter of BCPL)?

. . . and there was a flamewar over it, blah blah blah, and finally it
was C++.  Okay.  Good historical reference.  Thanks.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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